This Tomato Basil Soup is so easy to make! In under 30 minutes you’ll have a classic plant-based soup with a rich basil flavor.
What could be more classic than a tomato and basil soup? It’s cozy and bright, the perfect accompaniment to grilled cheese or crusty bread. Alex and I created this recipe to use an abundance of basil from our bushy basil plant. It’s simple and easy to prepare, but the flavor is more than the sum of its parts: savory and garlicky, with basil and herbs on the finish. It’s also a dairy-free and vegan soup, making it suitable for many diets. Of course you can also add a little milk or cream to make a creamy soup! Here’s how – and a few other tomato soup variations!
Ingredients for Tomato Basil Soup
This Easy Tomato Basil Soup is the definition of a classic soup: Here are the main steps chop, brown, simmer, mix. Alex and I created this to use some of our garden basil. (See this article on growing basil if you want to grow your own.) Like most tomato soups, canned tomatoes are used. And it takes less than 30 minutes to make! What you need for this soup:
- Canned tomatoes roasted over fire (see below)
- Onion
- Red pepper
- Garlic
- Fresh basil
- white wine vinegar
- vegetable soup
- olive oil
Tips for preparing tomato basil soup
There’s not much to do with this tomato basil soup! But here are some pointers to keep in mind:
- Use fire roasted OR best quality tomatoes and simmer longer. Fire Roasted Tomatoes are the key to great flavor in less time! This variety tastes sweeter out of the can than the typical tomato, so you don’t have to simmer it as much. If you can’t find any, use the best quality tomatoes you can find. Taste and if the flavors need more development, you can simmer a little longer.
- Use an immersion blender to simmer in the pan, but be careful! You can leave the soup in the pot and puree with a hand blender or hand blender. But be careful: you can get red spots everywhere! Be careful because the soup can splatter. You can also just transfer the soup into a commercial blender: just be careful when pouring hot soup into the blender.
How to serve tomato and basil soup
Tomato Basil Soup takes a good pairing to make a hearty meal! It’s packed with veggies and nutrients, but it’s not filling enough to function as a meal (there’s not enough protein to keep you full on its own). Here are some ideas of what we would serve with a meal:
5 excellent variations of tomato soup
This tomato and basil soup is the most classic of our tomato soup recipes. But if you want to try something more sophisticated, here are a few other tomato soup variations we like:
- Tomato Artichoke Soup: Our “famous” tomato and artichoke soup is inspired by the famous soup from our neighborhood restaurant, Café Patachou.
- Tomato Basil Gnocchi Soup: Imagine the best tomato and basil soup. So imagine it with pasty gnocchi! This easy soup only takes 30 minutes to make and features delicious balls of pasta dough.
- Creamy vegan tomato soup: Here’s our favorite creamy vegan tomato soup: The creaminess comes from mixing it with cashews in a flavorful puree.
- Indian Tomato Lime Soup: This tomato soup has a unique twist: It’s a flavorful and creamy soup flavored with yogurt, onions, garlic, cardamom and cumin.
- Tomato Ball Soup: This soup is similar to our Tomato Basil Gnocchi Soup, but includes homemade parmesan ricotta balls.
Need a hand blender?
A hand blender is also known as a “stick blender” or stick blender. It’s useful for making pureed soups like this Tomato Basil Soup because you can add them straight to the pot instead of pouring the hot soup into a blender and then flipping it.
It’s also great for small batch mixes as well as salad dressings like our Raspberry Vinaigrette. Since the amount of ingredients is quite small, it can be difficult to puree them in a standard sized blender. So it’s good to have a blender for this kind of work! (We don’t own a small blender, so we make this.) Here’s one we recommend: Hand blender | Amazon
This Tomato Basil Soup recipe is…
Vegetarian, gluten-free, vegan, plant-based, dairy-free, refined sugar-free and naturally sweetened.
The description
This Tomato Basil Soup is so easy to make! In under 30 minutes you’ll have a classic plant-based soup with a rich basil flavor.
- 1 medium yellow onion
- 1 Red pepper
- 3 Garlic cloves
- 1 cup Basil leaves, packed loose
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
- 281 ounce fire roasted shredded tomatoes (with basil if available)
- 1 liter vegetable soup
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- Garnish ideas: chopped basil, a drizzle of olive oil, homemade croutons
- Chop the onion and peppers. Chop the garlic. Tear the basil leaves into large pieces.
- In a medium-sized saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion and red bell pepper and sauté until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, 30 seconds. Add the white wine vinegar and cook until evaporated.
- Add tomatoes, vegetable stock and salt and bring to a boil. Simmer for 15 minutes. Add the basil and use an immersion blender to puree the soup until creamy (or place in a standard blender and puree). Serve immediately, refrigerate for up to 5 days, or freeze for several months.*
Remarks
*For a creamy variant, you can incorporate some cream or milk.
- Category: Soup
- Method: Mix
- Kitchen: Italian
Keywords: Tomato Basil Soup, Easy Tomato Basil Soup
Last updated: August 2020
